“Authorities have yet to understand that media are not their private property,” says the OSCE

IN FRANCE IT IS THE PRESIDENT WHO NOMINATES THE HEAD OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING – CLEARLY AN INFRINGEMENT OF THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS NOT UNKNOWN IN TOTALITARIAN STATES.

HONOR MAHONY

July 30, 2010 -  http://euobserver.com/9/30561/?rk=1

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Media freedom is threatened in most European countries, warns the Organisation for Co-operation and Security in Europe, highlighting incidences in several of its member states including EU countries France, Italy and Greece.

In a report published Thursday (29 July), the 56-member OSCE, a loose gathering of states monitoring regional security, says that “freedom of the media concerns arise in most OSCE participating States. They only manifest themselves differently.”

The breaches, either existing or potential, to media freedom range from a draft law on electronic surveillance and electronic eavesdropping law in Italy which could “seriously hinder investigative journalism” to a draft law in Estonia that may allow too many exemptions to the right to protect the identity of sources, to the fact that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is head of the public service broadcaster, France Televisions.

“The presidential nomination of the head of a country’s public service broadcaster is an obstacle to its independence and contradicts OSCE commitments,” said the body’s Dunja Mijatovic, in charge of monitoring media freedom.

Other areas of concern include the recent adoption by the Hungarian Parliament of parts of a media package with elements threatening media freedom and a possible threat in Greece to a minority radio station that broadcasts in Turkish, while the organisation expresses hope that Germany will adopt a law protecting investigative journalists.

Beyond the EU, the “brutal attack” against a Serbian journalist known for his outspokenness against nationalism was highlighted as was the the “high number of criminal prosecutions” against journalists in Turkey covering sensitive issues as well “serious infringements” on media pluralism in Kyrgyzstan and a series of attacks against journalists in Russia.

“Many argue that media freedom is in decline across the OSCE region. In some aspects, I can subscribe to that,” said Ms Mitjatovic.

“Authorities have yet to understand that media are not their private property and that journalists have the right to scrutinize those who are elected.”

“Violence against journalists equals violence against society and democracy and should be met with harsh condemnation and prosecution of the perpetrators,” she added.

With the internet changing the nature and scope of reporting, Ms Mijatovi also promised a study into the various internet laws in place across the OSCE countries.

“My office is currently working on the compilation of the first comprehensive matrix on internet legislation which will include an overview of legal provisions related to freedom of the media, the free flow of information and media pluralism on the internet in the OSCE region.”

She won the 2006 presidential election in a runoff, beating center-right US dollar billionaire businessman and former senator Sebastián Piñera with 53.5% of the vote.

She campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile’s free-market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the gap between rich and poor, one of the largest in the world.

Bachelet, a pediatrician and epidemiologist with studies in military strategy, served as Health Minister and Defense Minister under President Ricardo Lagos.

Bachelet is the second child of archaeologist Ángela Jeria Gómez and Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez.

Facing growing food shortages, the government of Salvador Allende placed Bachelet’s father in charge of the Food Distribution Office. When General Augusto Pinochet came to power in the September 11, 1973 coup, General Bachelet, refusing exile, was detained at the Air War Academy under charges of treason. Following months of daily torture at Santiago’s Public Prison, on March 12, 1974, he suffered a cardiac arrest that resulted in his death. On January 10, 1975, Bachelet and her mother were detained at their apartment by two DINA agents, who blindfolded them and drove them to Villa Grimaldi, a notorious secret detention center in Santiago, where they were separated and submitted to interrogation and torture.^[13] Some days later they were transferred to Cuatro Álamos (“Four Poplars”) detention center, where they were held until the end of January. Later in 1975, thanks to sympathetic connections in the military, both were exiled to Australia, where Bachelet’s older brother Alberto had moved in 1969.

Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Louis-Joseph Bachelet Lapierre, was a French wine merchant from Chassagne-Montrachet who emigrated to Chile with his Parisian wife, Françoise Jeanne Beault, in 1860 hired as a wine-making expert by the Subercaseaux vineyards in southern Santiago.

In February 1979, Bachelet returned to Santiago, Chile from East Germany. Her medical school credits from the GDR were not transferred, forcing her to resume her studies from where she had left off before fleeing the country. ^{[citation needed]} She graduated as M.D. on January 7, 1983^. She wished to work in the public sector wherever attention was most needed, applying for a position as general practitioner; her petition was, however, rejected by the military government on “political grounds.” Instead, because of her academic performance and published papers, she earned a scholarship to specialize in pediatrics and public health at Roberto del Río Children’s Hospital (1983–1986). During this time she also worked at PIDEE (Protection of Children Injured by States of Emergency Foundation), a non-governmental organization helping children of the tortured and missing in Santiago and Chillán. She was head of the foundation’s Medical Department between 1986 and 1990. Some time after her second child with Dávalos, Francisca Valentina, was born in February 1984, she and her husband legally separated. She is a separated mother of three and describes herself as an agnostic.

In 1990, after democracy was restored in Chile, Bachelet worked for the Ministry of Health’s West Santiago Health Service and was a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization and the German Corporation for Technical Cooperation.

Driven by an interest in civil-military relations, in 1996 Bachelet began studies in military strategy at the National Academy for Strategic and Policy Studies (Anepe) in Chile, obtaining first place in her class.^[2] Her student achievement earned her a presidential scholarship, permitting her to continue her studies in the United States at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C., completing a Continental Defense Course in 1998. That same year she returned to Chile to work for the Defense Ministry as Senior Assistant to the Defense Minister. She subsequently graduated from a Master’s program in military science at the Chilean Army‘s War Academy.

In 1996 Bachelet ran against future presidential adversary Joaquín Lavín for the mayorship of Las Condes, a wealthy Santiago suburb and a right-wing stronghold. Lavín won the 22-candidate election with nearly 78% of the vote, while she finished fourth at 2.35%. At the 1999 presidential primary of Coalition of Parties for Democracy (CPD), Chile’s governing coalition since 1990, she worked for Ricardo Lagos’s nomination, heading the Santiago electoral zone.

On March 11, 2000 Bachelet—virtually unknown at the time—was appointed Minister of Health by President Ricardo Lagos. She began an in-depth study of the public health-care system that led to the AUGE plan a few years later. She was also given the task of eliminating waiting lists in the saturated public hospital system within the first 100 days of Lagos’s government. She reduced waiting lists by 90%, but was unable to eliminate them completely and offered her resignation, which was promptly rejected by the President.  Controversially,  she allowed free distribution of the morning-after pill for victims of sexual abuse.

On January 7, 2002 Bachelet was appointed Defense Minister, becoming the first woman to hold this post in a Latin American country and one of the few in the world. While Minister of Defense she promoted reconciliatory gestures between the military and victims of the dictatorship, culminating in the historic 2003 declaration by General Juan Emilio Cheyre, head of the army, that “never again” would the military subvert democracy in Chile.  She also oversaw a reform of the military pension system and continued with the process of modernization of the Chilean armed forces with the purchasing of new military equipment, while engaging in international peace operations.

A moment which has been cited as key to Bachelet’s chances to the presidency came during a flood in northern Santiago where she, as Defense Minister, led a rescue operation on top of an amphibious tank, wearing a cloak and military cap.

In late 2004, following a surge of her popularity in opinion polls, Bachelet was established as the only CPD figure able to defeat Lavín, and she was asked to become the Socialists’ candidate for the presidency.

According to The Economist magazine the government of Bachelet opted to make social protection and the promotion of equality of opportunity her main priority. Since becoming President, her government built 3,500 crèches daycare for poorer children. It introduced a universal minimum state pension and extended free health care to cover many serious conditions.
A new housing policy aimed at abolishing the last remaining shanty-towns in Chile by 2010 featured grants to the poorest families. Some of them had to pay just US$400 for a house costing about US$20,000.

In October 2009 Ms Bachelet’s popularity peaked at 80 percent according to a public opinion poll by conservative polling institute Adimark GfK., and in March 2010 she showed an approval rating of 84%, and in terms of specific characteristics attributed to Chile’s president, ‘loved by Chileans’ reached a record 96%.

The Chilean Constitution does not allow a president to serve two consecutive terms, so Bachelet left office in March 2010.

Chile’s October 16, 2006 vote in the United Nations Security Council election—with Venezuela and Guatemala deadlocked in a bid for the two-year, non-permanent Latin American and Caribbean seat on the Security Council — developed into a major ideological issue in the country, and was seen as a test for Bachelet. The governing coalition was divided between the Socialists, who supported a vote for Venezuela, and the Christian Democrats, who strongly opposed it. The day before the vote the president announced (through her spokesman) that Chile would abstain, citing as reason a lack of regional consensus over a single candidate, ending months of speculation.

Continuing the coalition’s free-trade strategy, in August 2006 Bachelet promulgated a free trade agreement with the People’s Republic of China (signed under the previous administration of Ricardo Lagos), the first Chinese free-trade agreement with a Latin American nation; similar deals with Japan and India were promulgated in August 2007. In October 2006, Bachelet promulgated a multilateral trade deal with New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (P4),  also signed under Lagos’ presidency.  She also held free-trade talks with other countries, including Australia, Vietnam,  Turkey and Malaysia. Regionally, she signed bilateral free trade agreements with Panama, Peru and Colombia.

At the beginning of 2010 Chile became the OECD’s 31st member, and its first in South America. This acceptance for OECD membership marked international recognition of nearly two decades of democratic reform and sound economic policies; for the OECD, Chile’s membership was a major milestone in its mission to build a stronger, cleaner and fairer global economy

She speaks Spanish (her native language), English, German, Portuguese and French.

In 2009 Forbes magazine ranked her as the 22nd in the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world (she was #25 in 2008, #27 in 2007, and #17 in 2006). In 2008, TIME magazine ranked her 15 on its list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Eleanor Clift wrote on politicsdaily.com on June 10, 2010 that Michelle Bachelet moved the Chilean Government from Macho – to – Maternal. She was clearly the best qualified person to establish and head the new UN institution that was baptized with the terrible name UNWOMEN. And you know what, letting into the UN building a highly qualified person may endanger the minions working there. That, is what doomed on me today, this because I also learned an additional fact about Bachellet’s Chile, and that is why I write this UPDATE.
 http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/10/…

The additional fact I learned today came from reading material that will appear in an Energy Management Magazine Published in India. The article is by – Ms. Jimena Bronfman, Vice Minister of Energy, Chile , and it deals with Chile moving into leadership position on energy issues – and you guessed right if you said that Dr. Bachelet started this. In effect the Ministry of Energy – which for Chile is a Ministry of Energy Efficiency – was set up at the end of her days in the Presidential Office. We are sure that this was not an easy task to fulfill – but we are sure that it will be one of her most important legacies. We know that Energy Efficiency is not a top priority of the G77 real on-going leadership and this, more then anything else, explains the diatribe we described in our original posting which we updated now.

The creation of the Ministry of Energy in February 1^st 2010 is an important milestone in this process. The law that is the basis for Chile’s current institutional framework also includes the creation of the Chilean Energy Efficiency Agency, a public private entity that will implement the public policies designed by the Energy Efficiency Division of the Ministry.

Energy Efficiency is one of the main goals of Chile’s national energy policy, families are changing their habits and industries, corporations and local governments are trying to reduce their energy consumption by adopting energy-efficient measures. This fostering environment was recently faced by the February 27^th earthquake and tsunami that devastated several regions of our country. We have taken this catastrophe as an opportunity and a challenge to rebuild our towns and cities using energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The Ministry of Energy is working with other ministries, such as the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education to include energy efficiency measures and non-conventional renewable energies in the reconstruction of health and education infrastructure and emergency housing. We are also developing a pilot project to rebuild a town with the leading best practices in sustainability and energy consumption, so it can be replicated in other parts of the region and world.

Energy Efficiency is key to Chile’s competitiveness and economic growth. According to studies carried out before the earthquake, energy efficiency measures could help reduce Chile’s energy demand by around 14% by 2020. This would have a positive financial impact in the reconstruction process, as public funds saved by reduction of energy consumption can be reallocated to other priorities of the rebuilding program.

Energy Efficiency will also help Chile, whose economy is based on exports, to reduce its carbon footprint and be competitive in a world that is increasingly carbon-conscious. Although Chile’s contribution to global greenhouse emissions is low compared to many other nations, our wines, copper, fruits, fish and wood products are sold in developed markets that will require sustainable production processes.

In order to achieve our goals we are currently developing the Energy Efficiency Strategy for 2020. At the moment a draft proposal is being reviewed by key actors from the private and the public sectors who will be involved in the actual implementation of the strategy. The main objective of this process is to promote a broad discussion of the specific proposals, introduce appropriate improvements and gain comprehensive support for the energy saving goals contemplated in the strategy.  The official version of the E3 will be published after completion of this discussion period, hopefully by the end of November 2010.

Other challenges for this year include the implementation of the rest of our institutional framework, which will be completed by the creation of the Chilean Energy Efficiency Agency, a public-private non-profit entity that will implement the Ministry’s public policies. It will be funded mainly through public funds but will include private sector representatives in its board. The focus of the Agency’s work will be guided by the E3 strategy; however, we shall also aim at developing other important projects such as education. We strongly believe that a crucial driver for change in these matters is highly-skilled human resources. Therefore, education in schools, undergraduate and post-graduate education is needed to introduce strong energy efficiency programs. Other important aspects of energy efficiency lie in smart-grid and net-metering programs.

Another main priority for 2010 is the development of energy efficiency labelling for cars, new houses and domestic appliances. Labelling is currently mandatory for refrigerators and light bulbs, and we aim to expand this initiative so consumers have all the information available to make the right decisions.

We also want to continue growing our international alliances and cooperation. We have already executed collaboration agreements with several countries and organizations worldwide, and we will work to strengthen and deepen those relationships. Energy Efficiency is a global effort that can be fostered by exchanging best practices that will benefit consumers, industries and countries all over the world.

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The China and Developing States, the full name of the G77 that purports speaking for 130 out of the 192 UN Member States, is a UN charade – simply, because there never was a common interest among all these various States Now, with China becoming at least a G2 with the United States, if not the straight Global Economic Super power, for her to use the leadership of this rag-tag bunch and push into leadership positions at the UN – Libya, Zimbabwe, Sudan etc. resulted in turning the whole UN into a laughable enterprise. Bravo to little Palau that walked out on this continuous obstructionist committee circuit that calls for time-out whenever the UN tries to reach some decision. We watched them at climate Change meetings where Saudi Arabia is their representative.

Perhaps there was once s difference between the industrialized European  – North American countries plus Japan, and the rest of the world – this when the UN was created and the decolonizing process was giving birth to many new UN Member States – in effect multiplying by three the total number of global independent States, but since then much has changed.

The Latin ABC, Mexico, Korea, Turkey, India, Indonesia, South Africa have all knocked successfully at the corporate doors of development and entered the G20. The OECD club includes most of these G20 plus most EU States and Israel that is a perpetual  G77 pariah. They have now real interests to defend and not much time for posturing – so we will see slowly a realignment also at the UN. OK, China and South Africa will not want to give up their positions as leaders of the 130. It keeps some of their diplomats in the circuit and the UN will continue the fiction, but how long hence that the AOSIS/SIDS will still play this game? When will they see that Palau was indeed a trailblazer? Will the lack of action on Climate Change by some of the major OECD members who effectively joined the Saudis in opposing real action on climate, push these States back into the G77 arms?

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THURSDAY, JULY 08, 2010
Chile Threatens to Split South Unity in World Body.
Thalif Deen
 http://ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.as…

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 (IPS) – The Group of 77 (G77) has historically maintained a united front, vociferously protecting the economic interests of developing countries at the United Nations. But its longstanding solidarity is now being threatened by the continued presence of a single Latin American country which recently joined the ranks of a rich elitist group.

Chile, which was formally inducted last May into the 30-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), described as an exclusive club of industrial nations, has given no indications of leaving the G77, thereby triggering a sharp division of opinion among its 130 members. “Chile wants to have it both ways,” one G77 member told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It wants to have one foot in the OECD and another in the G77. But this is unacceptable to some of us.”

When Mexico and South Korea broke ranks with the developing world and joined the Paris-based OECD back in 1994 and 1996, respectively, both countries quit the G77, the largest single coalition of developing countries at the United Nations.

Chakravarti Raghavan, editor emeritus of the Geneva-based South-North Development Monitor published by the Third World Network, told IPS if Chile does not voluntarily quit the G77, the group must find a way around its longstanding convention of consensus decisions, and “politely but firmly throw Chile out”.

“This will be in line with the spirit and the intentions behind the formation of the Group of 77 and its functioning over all these years,” he added.

“It is probably about time that the G77 being an informal grouping expel Chile – on the simple ground that you can’t belong to two different groupings,” said Raghavan, who is considered a foremost authority on the G77, and who has written extensively about the Group since its inception in June 1964.

“It is my impression that Mexico, when it joined OECD, initially wanted to be in both camps, but was told it was not possible,” he added.

On North-South economic issues at the United Nations, the G77 and the OECD hold diametrically opposite views – most or all of the time.

The OECD is home to some of the world’s major economic powers, including the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan. Most of the emerging economic powers, including Brazil, India, China and South Africa, are longstanding members of the G77 and not members of the OECD.

But according to the OECD, it is planning to have discussions with Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa – all active members of the G77 – “with a view to possible membership”.

The G77 has lost four other members over the years: Cyprus and Malta (both in May 1994) and Romania (January 2007) when they joined the European Union.

A fourth country, Palau, a small island developing nation in the Pacific, withdrew from the G77 in June 2006, ostensibly for financial reasons.

Besides Chile, Mexico and South Korea, the OECD has also added three other non-G77 members into its ranks: Estonia, Slovenia and Israel.

Speaking off-the-record, a diplomat from a G77 country expressed a dissenting point of view when he told IPS: “There is nothing in the G77 rules or guidelines stating that an OECD member has to quit the G77.”

He said Chile is well within its rights to remain a member of the G77.

“And, while there may be a few in G77 who may not be pleased about Chile remaining in the G77, there are no serious moves afoot to push them out of the grouping,” he said. “Most of us, support Chile remaining in the G77. There will be strong resistance from a number of us if anyone tries to eject Chile from the G77.”

And as an after-thought, he added: “The OECD had made leaving the G77 a condition for Mexico’s entry into the OECD. However, when Chile was applying to the OECD, there was no such condition.”

Moreover, he said, Mexico stated that leaving the G77 should not be a condition for Chile’s entry.

Another G77 delegate told IPS that if Chile does not voluntarily leave the Group, as Mexico and South Korea did in previous years, a divided G77 may be forced to take a decision either way.

Meanwhile the former G8 – the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia – has been expanded into the G20 to include seven developing nations (besides Australia, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey and the European Union).

The seven developing countries – Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa – are still members of the G77.

Chile has argued that G77 members that belong to the G20 should be considered in the same light as G77 members belonging to the OECD. But the G20 is not considered a formal body like the OECD, which is treaty-based and whose decisions are binding on all its members.

According to an OECD statement, the invitation to Chile to become the Organisation’s 31st member came at a time when the OECD is expanding its relations with the region.

As an OECD member, Chile will participate in all areas of the OECD’s work, from economic and financial policy to education, employment and social affairs. It will also join with other OECD countries to share experiences and best practices, setting new standards and developing new governance mechanisms for its economy and society more broadly.

The statement said that during two years of accession negotiations, Chile was reviewed by some 20 OECD committees with respect to OECD instruments, standards and benchmarks.

The invitation to take up membership confirms that Chile is taking appropriate steps to reform its economy including in the areas of corporate governance, anti-corruption, and environmental protection, the statement said.

The 17 states that have ratified the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers are: Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland. The European Commission is also a party.

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GENEVA (Reuters) – Friday, July 2, 2010 – European citizens will be able to find out what dangerous substances are emitted in their neighborhoods under an environmental treaty to go into effect in 17 countries in October, the United Nations said on Friday.

Participating states will have to issue public inventories of major pollutants that their industries, traffic, agriculture and enterprises spew into the air, soil and water, including greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Some 86 categories of substances — ranging from mercury and other heavy metals, benzine, asbestos, pesticides including DDT, and dioxins — are covered under the pact.

“These inventories are made available to the public over the Internet and generally also through a downloadable map that helps people identify major pollutants that are traveling through their neighborhoods to discover what is in their backyard …,” Michael Stanley-Jones, an environmental expert at the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), told reporters.

“It doesn’t cover all chemicals, but it does cover the major releases of chemicals,” he said.

The pact, signed in 2003 by 36 countries, enters into force on October 8 after being ratified recently by a 17th country (France), according to the Geneva-based agency. It is open to all U.N. member states for ratification.

“It is truly a global instrument, part of a global movement initiated in the 1980s after the major accidents in Bhopal and Chernobyl,” said Stanley-Jones.

A catastrophic industrial accident in central India killed nearly 8,000 people in 1984 when tons of toxic gas leaked from a pesticide plant of Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co, the largest U.S. chemical maker.

The Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986, the world’s worst civil nuclear accident, sent radiation over most of Europe.

The protocol to the 2001 Aarhus Convention enables citizens to voice concern over pollution to industry or regulators.

“As the major greenhouse gas pollutants are included in the protocol, this will give decision-makers and the public powerful new tools for identifying the major industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions,” Stanley-Jones said.

“Major exceptions are for national security (facilities) and also the nuclear industry — radioactive substances are not covered by the protocol,” he said, noting that countries may add further substances and facilities to their national registers.

Countries outside of Europe, including Chile and Mexico, have developed their own registers and China’s industrial region of Shanghai is also drawing one up, according to the expert.

The 17 states that have ratified the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers are: Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland. The European Commission is also a party.

The list of OECD countries ten days ago included the Twenty countries that originally signed the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on 14 December 1960.

Since then eleven countries have become members of the Organization. The last to be accepted before last Monday was the Slovak Republic that ratified acceptance December 14, 2000,

The Member countries of the Organization before last Monday, and the dates on which they deposited their instruments of ratification are:
AUSTRALIA: 7 June 1971
AUSTRIA: 29 September 1961
BELGIUM: 13 September 1961
CANADA: 10 April 1961
CHILE: 7 May 2010
CZECH REPUBLIC: 21 December 1995
DENMARK: 30 May 1961
FINLAND: 28 January 1969
FRANCE: 7 August 1961
GERMANY: 27 September 1961
GREECE: 27 September 1961
HUNGARY: 7 May 1996
ICELAND: 5 June 1961
IRELAND: 17 August 1961
ITALY: 29 March 1962
JAPAN: 28 April 1964
KOREA: 12 December 1996
LUXEMBOURG: 7 December 1961
MEXICO: 18 May 1994
NETHERLANDS: 13 November 1961
NEW ZEALAND: 29 May 1973
NORWAY: 4 July 1961
POLAND: 22 November 1996
PORTUGAL: 4 August 1961
SLOVAK REPUBLIC: 14 December 2000
SPAIN: 3 August 1961
SWEDEN: 28 September 1961
SWITZERLAND: 28 September 1961
TURKEY: 2 August 1961
UNITED KINGDOM: 2 May 1961
UNITED STATES: 12 April 1961

The preamble to the document that created December 14, 2010 the OECD organization says:

PARIS 14th December 1960

THE GOVERNMENTS of the Republic of Austria, the Kingdom of Belgium, Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kingdom of Greece, the Republic of Iceland, Ireland, the Italian Republic, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Norway, the Portuguese Republic, Spain, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Swiss Confederation, the Turkish Republic, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America;

CONSIDERING that economic strength and prosperity are essential for the attainment of the purposes of the United Nations, the preservation of individual liberty and the increase of general well-being;

BELIEVING that they can further these aims most effectively by strengthening the tradition of co-operation which has evolved among them;

RECOGNISING that the economic recovery and progress of Europe to which their participation in the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation has made a major contribution, have opened new perspectives for strengthening that tradition and applying it to new tasks and broader objectives;

CONVINCED that broader co-operation will make a vital contribution to peaceful and harmonious relations among the peoples of the world;

RECOGNISING the increasing interdependence of their economies;

DETERMINED by consultation and co-operation to use more effectively their capacities and potentialities so as to promote the highest sustainable growth of their economies and improve the economic and social well-being of their peoples;

BELIEVING that the economically more advanced nations should co-operate in assisting to the best of their ability the countries in process of economic development;

RECOGNISING that the further expansion of world trade is one of the most important factors favouring the economic development of countries and the improvement of international economic relations; and

DETERMINED to pursue these purposes in a manner consistent with their obligations in other international organisations or institutions in which they participate or under agreements to which they are a party;

HAVE THEREFORE AGREED on the following provisions for the reconstitution of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development -

And the proactive 21 articles can be seen at:

http://www.oecd.org/document/7/0,3343,en_2649_201185_1915847_1_1_1_1,00.html

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On Monday, May 10, 2010, Israel, Estonia and Slovenia, by unanimous vote of the member States, were invited to join the OECD.

Israel, Estonia and Slovenia Join the OECD (UPDATE)

Israel, Slovenia and Estonia were invited to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of (now 34) wealthy democracies.  The OECD does a host of things, from helping to stabilize its members’ economies to serving as a focal point for assisting in the economic development of poorer countries.

The full release can be read at:  

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 http://ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.as…

MONDAY, MAY 17, 2010
Shielded by U.S. Umbrella, Israel Joins Rich Man’s Club.
by Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 16 (IPS) – With tongue firmly entrenched in his cheek, an Arab diplomat recounts an Israeli cabinet meeting interrupted by an aide rushing in with the latest statistics on the state of the economy. The crops were down, growth was low, reserves were minimal and inflation was high, he announced, portraying a rather gloomy economic picture.

Momentarily, the prime minister seemed flustered by the news – until he realized the aide was really referring to the state of the Israeli economy. Breathing a sigh of relief, he joyfully exclaimed: “Thank God, for a moment I thought you were referring to the American economy” – and went on with the business of the day, totally unfazed. The apocryphal story, doing the rounds at the United Nations, reveals the reality of Israeli life: its very existence has depended largely on the unrestrained political, economic and military support of the United States.

After more than a decade of lobbying, Israel won a key diplomatic victory Monday by gaining admission to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). But could Israel have joined the OECD without the billions of dollars in U.S. aid and outright grants, which helped propel the Jewish state into the ranks of Western industrial nations?

The Paris-based organisation, long described as an exclusive club of rich nations, also invited Estonia and Slovenia to join its privileged ranks, pushing its total membership to 34.

OECD’s current members range from Austria, Australia, Belgium, and Canada to France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Britain and the United States.

All three new members will be inducted at a special ceremony during the annual meeting of the OECD Council, chaired by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in Paris on May 27.

The OECD decided to admit Israel into its ranks despite accusations of human rights violations and war crimes by a U.N. commission – specifically during the war against Gaza in December 2008.

Asked if Israel’s entry will have an impact on how the politically and economically powerful European Union (EU) responds to human rights violations in the occupied territories, Nadia Hijab, an independent analyst and a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, told IPS she wasn’t sure how it will play out with the 27 EU states.

But Hijab pointed out that from a human rights perspective, the OECD has completely ignored its own Road Map for Israel’s accession, which states that Israel has to demonstrate a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law.

Indeed, only a democracy can join the OECD, she added.

But human rights organisations have accused Israel of violating most of the basic principles of democracy, including civil and political rights, freedom of the press and fundamental rights of people under occupation.

A 17-point memo to the OECD by the worldwide Palestinian coalition BNC (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee) listed the many ways in which Israel does not uphold the rule of law at home or abroad.

In a detailed critique published in Agence Global, Hijab points out that the EU’s planned upgrade of relations with Israel was put on hold in the wake of Israel’s Gaza attack.

She said intensive lobbying by several churches and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including three Israeli human rights organisations, B’Tselem, HaMoked and Physicians for Human Rights, helped prevent it from being acted on.

Writing on ‘U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel’ for the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) last December, Jeremy Sharp, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs, says “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.” Since 1985, the United States has provided over 3.0 billion dollars in outright annual grants – with no payback obligation – to Israel. Of this, about 1.9 billion dollars have been earmarked as military aid and 1.2 billion dollars as economic aid.

Virtually all of the U.S. equipment in the Israeli military inventory has been purchased out of U.S. funds.

For many years, Sharp points out, “U.S. economic aid helped subsidise a lacklustre Israeli economy, though since the rapid expansion of Israel’s hi-tech sector in the 1990s (sparked partially by U.S.-Israeli scientific cooperation), Israel is now considered a fully industrialised nation with an economy on par with some Western European countries.”

Consequently, Israel and the United States agreed to gradually phase out economic grant aid to Tel Aviv.

According to an agreement reached under former U.S. President George W. Bush in August 2007, and to compensate for the loss of economic aid, there will be incremental annual increases in U.S. military grants to Israel, reaching 3.0 billion dollars by 2012.

The administration of President Barack Obama will dole out about 2.8 billion dollars in military grants to Israel in 2010.

And, Sharp says, U.S. military aid has “helped transform Israel’s armed forces into one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.”

Despite its admission to the OECD, Israel will continue to depend on strong political and military support from the United States. And more so at the United Nations, where Washington has continued to shield Israel from Security Council sanctions for war crimes and human rights violations.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies and chair of the Middle Eastern Studies Programme at the University of San Francisco, told IPS there is no way that Israel could get away with its widespread and systematic violations of international law were it not effectively shielded by the U.S. veto power in the Security Council.

“Israel is not inherently worse than other countries, it’s just that their government has so few constraints upon its behaviour,” he said.

But thanks to this superpower umbrella which protects the Israelis from sanctions and other consequences of their actions, there is no deterrent preventing them from running roughshod over international legal norms, Zunes added.

This is not fundamentally different than the threat of a French veto preventing the Security Council from enforcing its resolutions regarding the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, he added.

Similarly, for decades, Britain and the United States blocked any decisive U.N. action regarding Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.

“The failure to force Israel to end its occupation, colonisation and repression of its neighbours, therefore, is not simply the fault of a supposedly all-powerful Zionist lobby,” Zunes said.

Rather, it is yet another sad chapter in the longstanding tradition of great powers hypocritically aiding and abetting the very kinds of illegitimate policies by their allies for which they would demand strict international sanctions, he argued.

Or worse, if they were being carried out by a regime deemed less friendly to their interests, Zunes declared.

———————

Our website purports to provide a neutral platform when it comes to the Middle East. This includes a clear rejection of the world pouring in finances to the oil countries and hurting the interests of our generation and of all generations to come.

Providing funds to the oil countries has done nothing for their development and only enriched a very thin layer of royal families in underpopulated countries that in order to deflect attention from what they do to their own people created the obviously, originally UN-approved Israel bogey-man. Rather then develop the Middle East, the oil money deepened resentment of Israel and the US was poring money not just into Israel, but to all States in the region.

Egypt got more money then Israel, just in order to pay for the smile of the Sphinx – Egypt being the only Arab country that had the military potential to do mischief – so they were bought off with American money that was used up not to create an economy. There is no chance Egypt will be invited to OECD membership – they have little to offer but needs.

Israel is the only Democracy in the region – albeit not a perfect one as it is being managed under conditions of a perpetual state-of-war. Yes, there is much we criticize in Israel, but we also know that as long as the Arab leaders do not follow President Sadat’s example and come to Jerusalem – Yes – Jerusalem – not Tel-Aviv – with an outstretched hand to claim “Peace and Territory” – there is very little that can change. The Arabs will have the money and stay underdeveloped and poor – the Israelis will have the technologies and will help build the World of tomorrow. So far as our friend Thalif Deen, his article is informative as far as it describes the Arab position at the UN – it negative and uninformed when it comes to what the UN ought to be like.

Will Brazil, China, India look at what we say here and think how to move up in the world to enter OECD also – see Mexico, Korea, Turkey, Israel were able to and have much smaller economies?

President Bush and Secretary Condaleezza Rice said that Russia will not get away with this like it happened in Hungary.

On CNN, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the man with the Kosovo and Bosnia experience, said this was not Kosovo. The Russians were ready to stage this action already two years ago. It happened now because there was a Russian provocation and there has been indeed a real ethnic cleansing going on in Ossetia and in Abkhazia that caused many thousands of refugees pouring continuously into Georgia. The US says the number is 150,000 displaced people.

Holbrooke looks back into history and thinks of Budapest of 19956, Prag of 1966, Afghanistan of 1968 – so this is the invasion of Georgia that was executed in similar methodology.

Dmitry Simes, President of the Washington DC Nixon Center, and Rose Gottemoeller, Director of Carnegie, Moscow, agree to the above and say that the fact that this happened again at the time of the Olympics, just shows the Putin self confidence and that Putin does not worry that this will harm Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014. That area is in fact just across the border from were fighting was going on now.

Governor Bill Richardson stressed that this is not time for high US talk, simply, “we have no leverage on Russia,” so we have to engage them and not isolate them. He knows the area, problems, has been there – all as part of his UN Ambassadorship.

Georgia was incorporated into Russia in 1801 and stayed under Russian rule for 190 years. They re-emerged as an independent state only in 1991. The Ossentians always considered themselves different from the Georgians – and also not similar to the Russians. The same goes for Abkhazia and Azaria as per Rick Stengel, editor of Time Magazine, who was this Sunday’s coordinator of the GPS program that is usually brought out by Fareed Zakaria.

So, can one ostracize Russia from world business? Will this bring about a renewal of the Cold War?

He does not think that Russia has become a revisionist State and that it is fighting for a larger Russia. His idea is that the area is specially complicated – something like the Balkans, and that there were many reasons to what went on.

———

***

Cold Friends, Wrapped in Mink and Medals.

By BILL KELLER
Published in The New York Times August 16, 2008

Writing in The Financial Times last week, Chrystia Freeland recalled Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay “The End of History?,” which trumpeted the definitive triumph of liberal democracy. The great nightmare tyrannies of last century — the Evil Empire, Red China — had been left behind by those inseparable twins, freedom and prosperity. Civilization had chosen, and it chose us.

Related
Map
Russia Marches, Neighbors Check Their Cards (The New York Times, August 17, 2008)
Specter of Arrest Deters Demonstrators in China (The New York Tines, August 14, 2008)

Chrystia Freeland’s Article: The New Age of Authoritarianism  www.ft.com August 12, 2008)

So much for that thesis. Surveying the Russian military rout of neighboring Georgia and the spectacle of China’s Olympics, Ms. Freeland, editor of The Financial Times’s American edition and a journalist who started her career covering Russia and Ukraine, proclaimed that a new Age of Authoritarianism was upon us.

If it is not yet an age, it is at least a season: Springtime for autocrats, and not just the minor-league monsters of Zimbabwe and the like, but the giant regimes that seemed so surely bound for the ash heap in 1989.

The Chinese have made their Olympics an exultant display of athletic prowess and global prestige without having to temper their impulse to suppress and control. From the dazzling locksteps of that opening ceremony, to the kowtowing international V.I.P.’s, to the carefully policed absence of protest, this was an Olympics largely free of democratic mess.

Individualism has been confined between lane markers. The pre-Olympics promises that attention would be paid to international norms of behavior went unredeemed. The New York Times’s Andrew Jacobs followed one citizen who decided to take up the government’s Olympic offer of designated protest zones for aggrieved parties who had filed the proper paperwork. Zhang Wei applied for the requisite license and was promptly arrested for “disturbing social order.” Take that, International Olympic Committee.

The striking thing about Russia’s subjugation of uppity Georgia was not the ease or audacity but the swagger of it. This was not just about a couple of obscure border enclaves, nor even, really, about Georgia. This was existential payback.

It turns out that if 1989 was an end — the end of the Wall, the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, if not in fact the end of history — it was also a beginning.

It gave birth to a bitter resentment in the humiliated soul of Russia, and no one nursed the grudge so fiercely as Vladimir V. Putin. He watched the empire he had spied for disbanded. He endured the belittling lectures of a rich and self-righteous West. He watched the United States charm away his neighbors, invade his allies in Iraq, and, in his view, play God with the political map of Europe.

Mr. Putin is, in this sense of grievance, a man of his people, as visitors to the New York Times Web site can see in the sampling of breast-beating commentary from Russian bloggers. It is safe to assume that Mr. Putin’s already stratospheric popularity at home has grown to Phelpsian proportions, not least among the long-suffering military.

In China, 1989 was the year that a spark of liberal aspiration flickered on Tiananmen Square, and was decisively extinguished. That was another beginning, or at least a renewal: of Chinese resolve. In May of that year, in the midst of the Tiananmen euphoria, Mikhail S. Gorbachev visited Beijing, and two visions of a new communism stared each other in the face.

The protesters on the Chinese pavilion held banners welcoming Mr. Gorbachev as a champion of the greater freedom they sought. Meanwhile, the visiting Russian delegation marveled at the abundance in Chinese stores, the bounty of a policy that chose economic liberalization without political dissent.

The Chinese and Russians scorned each other’s neo-Communist models, but in some ways they have evolved toward one another. Both countries now tolerate a measure of entrepreneurship and social license, as long as neither threatens the dominion of the state. Both countries have calculated that you can buy a measure of domestic stability if you combine a little opportunity with an appeal to national pride. (The Chinese “street” felt no more sympathy for restive Tibetans than the Russian blogosphere felt for Georgia.) And both have discovered that if you are rich the world is less likely to get in your way.

President Bush was mocked from both sides for his seeming impotence. Neoconservatives were appalled by photos of President Bush sharing a laugh with Mr. Putin in Beijing while Russian armor gathered at the Georgian border. For a president who has made the export of democracy his signature doctrine, that looked to the stand-tough crowd like a “Pet Goat” moment.

Others argued that this was a crisis Mr. Bush tacitly encouraged by talking up Georgia’s rambunctious president as a friend and NATO candidate. By midweek, possibly goaded by the wailing of neoconservatives and the aggressively anti-Putin rhetoric of Senator John McCain, Mr. Bush had abruptly amped up his opprobrium and dispatched an American airlift of humanitarian aid. And by the weekend there was a cold war chill in the air.

But Mr. Bush’s predicament is not just his. The question of how to deal with these reinvigorated autocracies bedevils the Europeans and will surely rank high among the legacy issues that confound Mr. Bush’s successor.

This time it is not — or not yet — the threat of nuclear apocalypse that limits the West’s options toward our emboldened Eastern rivals. The Chinese, in fact, are acting as if they have gotten past the saber-rattling stage of emerging-power status; they lavish diplomacy on Taiwan and Japan, and deploy the might of capital instead. The Russians may be in a more adolescent, table-pounding stage of development, but Mr. Putin, too, prefers to work the economic levers, bullying with petroleum.

The United States, meanwhile, is mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, estranged from much of the world, and bled by serial economic crises.

History, it seems, is back, and not so obviously on our side.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, covered the last years of the Soviet Union for the newspaper.

***

——————

The New Age of Authoritarianism.
By Chrystia Freeland
Published: August 12 2008 in The Financial Times.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, democracy was on the march and we declared the End of History. Nearly two decades later, a neo-imperialist Russia is at war with Georgia, Communist China is proudly hosting the Olympics, and we find that, instead, we have entered the Age of Authoritarianism.

It is worth recalling how different we thought the future would be in the immediate, happy aftermath of the end of the cold war. Remember Francis Fukuyama’s ringing assertion: “The triumph of the west, of the western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to western liberalism.”

Even in the heady days of 1989, that declaration of universal – and possibly eternal – ideological victory seemed a little hubristic to Professor Fukuyama’s many critics. Yet his essay made such an impact because it captured the scale, and the enormous benefits, of the change sweeping through the world. Not only was the stifling Soviet – which was really the Russian – suzerainty over central and eastern Europe and central Asia coming to an end but, even more importantly, the very idea of a one-party state, ruthlessly presiding over a centrally planned economy, seemed to be discredited, if not forever, then surely for our lifetimes.

That collapse brought freedom and prosperity to millions of people who had lived under Soviet rule. Moreover, the implosion of Soviet communism inspired hundreds of millions of others around the world to embrace freer markets and demand more responsive governments. The great global economic boom of the past 20 years, which has brought more people out of poverty more quickly than at any other time in human history, would not have been possible had the Soviet way of ordering the world not been discredited first.

Yet today, in much of the world, the spread of freedom is being checked by an authoritarian revanche. That shift has been most obvious in the petro-states, where oil is casting its usual curse. From Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, the black-gold bonanza has given authoritarian regimes the currency to buy off or to repress their subjects. In Russia, oil has fuelled an economic boom that prime minister Vladimir Putin, and some of his foreign admirers, mistakenly attribute to his careful demolition of the chaotic democracy of the 1990s.

For Russians, that argument is strengthened by the fact that the rising economic power of the moment – China – is unashamedly sticking to its faith in one-party rule. The end of the cold war made it tempting to believe that as countries opened up their markets, and became richer in the process, they would inevitably open up their societies, too. George W. Bush, US president, reiterated that hopeful thesis on his Asia tour last week, insisting: “Young people who grow up with the freedom to trade goods will ultimately demand the freedom to trade ideas.”

But the Chinese mandarins and the Russian siloviki are taking a different view – and acting on it. As China scholar David Shambaugh recounts in his new book, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation , the CCP studied the collapse of Soviet communism with great care. And rather than seeing it as proof of the inevitable, global triumph of western liberalism, the Chinese comrades treated the Russian example as a textbook case of what a ruling Communist party ought not to do.

In this version of history, sinologist Andrew Nathan tells me, 1989 is also a turning point, but not because that was when communism’s most notorious wall came down. Instead, the key event of that year was the bloody suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square: “As a propaganda position they have put it out that we had a crackdown in 1989 and we saved the party and we saved the country,” he says. “We didn’t have a failure of will like the Russians. Without that, we wouldn’t have been a great, modern power.” That’s a point of view Mr Putin has embraced, too, describing the collapse of the Soviet Union as a tragedy and his own reconstruction of a neo-authoritarian state as the only way to restore Russian “greatness”.

The west has been remarkably sanguine about this resurgence of authoritarianism, and one reason is that, this time, the comrades have money. Even as the Kremlin repeatedly confiscates the assets not just of its own businesspeople but of foreign ones, too, investment bankers, and plain old investors, are flocking to a Moscow flush with petro-roubles. The same is true of the Gulf states. China, on a path to become the world’s largest economy, is the most attractive of all.

But the Age of Authoritarianism is bad news for all of us, not just the human rights campaigners that businesspeople and practitioners of realpolitik love to dismiss. Like all overly rigid objects, authoritarian regimes conceal a tremendous fragility in their apparent strength – and their leaders know it. It is this realisation that has driven Mr Putin’s systematic destruction of all forms of civil society – an eminently pragmatic measure, although it has mystified some outside observers, who wonder why so popular a leader needs to be so heavy-handed. China’s chiefs have figured this out, too, hence their anxiety about everything from the Muslim Uighurs to the internet to the former Soviet Union’s “colour revolutions”.

Of course, another way to ensure popular support for your authoritarian regime is by playing up nationalist sentiment. We are more tolerant of our home-grown bullies if we think we need them to fight our enemies abroad – as even democratic America has demonstrated in recent years. Mr Putin has understood this all along, launching a brutal attack on Chechnya even before his coronation as president in 2000.

Russia’s expert taunting of the hotheads in Georgia, followed by immediate and massive retaliation the moment Tbilisi took the bait, is the latest evidence that, for the Kremlin, neo-imperialism is an essential bulwark of neo-authoritarianism. Bringing down the walls really did make the world safer. Now that so many leaders are building them back up again, figuring out how to contain the 21st century’s monied authoritarians is our most pressing foreign policy dilemma.

 chrystia.freeland at ft.com

The eurozone’s economy has slipped further towards recession, with fresh output figures pointing to an economic downturn in the 15-strong zone as well as in the whole of the European Union, while inflation remains at a record high.

According to early predictions by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, gross domestic product (GDP) in the euro area dropped by 0.2 percent during the second quarter of 2008. This makes it the very first time that the monetary bloc’s economy declined since the launch of euro.

Similarly, the GDP for the whole of the EU shrank by 0.1 percent during the same period, with the worst performance recorded in the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia.

The gloomy forecasts – published on Thursday (14 August) – have reinforced concerns about the European economy moving closer to recession, with both Germany and France as the two biggest countries showing signals of an economic slow-down. The German economy dropped by 0.5 percent – which was less than analysts had predicted – while France’s shrunk by 0.3 percent.

Amelia Torres, European Commission spokeswoman for economic and monetary affairs, refused to speculate on recession fears and suggested that the latest figures were of no surprise to the EU executive, referring to unexpectedly high growth rates in the first quarter of 2008.

“I think it’s a bit exaggerated to use that word,” she told reporters in Brussels. But she admitted that “the signs are not really very good for the future”.

According to eurozone figures, no eurozone country is yet officially in recession – seen as two consecutive quarters of economic decline – but within the whole of the EU, Estonia has officially slipped in recession.

Along with the declining growth, inflation in the eurozone remained at a record high of 4 percent in July, unchanged from June. A year earlier the rate was 1.8 percent.

PHILIPPA RUNNER, for the EU observer from Brussels. August 5, 2008.

Estonia has called for EU soldiers to be sent to Georgia after a flare up in fighting in the country’s breakaway South Ossetia region, with the European Union increasingly keen to get involved in Georgian peacemaking.

“Peacekeeping in these regions is a suitable undertaking for the European Union,” he added, noting that the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, will visit Georgia “shortly.”

The Estonian statement comes after a shoot out between the Georgian army and separatist forces in South Ossetia over the weekend left six people dead and 22 wounded, with the Russian foreign ministry warning that “the threat of large-scale hostilities…is growing real.”

Rebel authorities in South Ossetia said the casualty figures were higher and that they are evacuating thousands of women and children to the neighbouring Russian province of North Ossetia, in claims rubbished by the Georgian government.

“Actions are being undertaken to create an illusion of large-scale armed conflict, as if we were on the brink of war…The Russian foreign ministry is obviously orchestrating and facilitating this process,” Georgian re-integration minister, Temur Yakobashvili, said. “All this is being done to derail the peace process in which the international community is becoming increasingly involved.”

“That’s why they have quietly reached out to Western capitals. An EU high representative, with a significant staff and peacekeeping contingent, would likely be welcomed by the Abkhaz,” Brussels’ Institute for Strategic Studies analysts Borut Grgic and Alexandros Petersen wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Towards and beyond the Copenhagen UN Summit, NCS gathers a significant number of business and industry leaders. In 2007 the event gathered more than 600 decision makers. This year more than 1000 delegates are projected for the event in November.

As we would like to offer our delegates key insight from experts WE ARE CURRENTLY LOOKING FOR SPEAKERS for the following sessions:

- Building the Future – Energy Efficiency:

What energy and carbon savings could be realized if older commercial buildings had the energy consumption of the newer commercial building stock? How can we improve the incorporation of different energy efficiencies into different types of domestic and non-domestic buildings? And what will it take to achieve mass deployment of carbon neutral buildings?

- Adaptation in the Third World – Markets Beyond China and India:

As a global problem, climate change demands global solutions – yet the majority of the technology and financing for these solutions are not accessible to emerging economies and developing nations. India and China are naturally the center of attention when it comes to CDM projects or other climate action projects and policies, but how can we ensure that countries in Africa, Asia and South and Central America also have the capacity and the technology to develop in a sustainable and climate friendly manner?

- The Future of CDM – The Post 2012 Scene:

At the moment, there are more than 3,000 CDM projects in progress. What is the potential of the CDM on the post 2012 scenario and what concrete measures will be presented a the COP15 to improve this mechanism and ensure that it is contributing to global emission reductions and to technology transfer to all developing nations

Climate Solutions for China:

China is on its way to become the largest energy market in the world, with the greatest environmental challenges. This creates an enormous potential for the Nordic companies. The current five-year plan of China contains 250 billion dollar for investments in energy savings and environmental considerations and a range of ambitious goals.

Thinking Outside the Barrel:

President George W. Bush has stated that: “America is addicted to oil.” At times when the price approaches $150 per barrel – it is an expensive addiction to have. Fortunately, several alternatives exist.

The Finance of Climate Change – A Guide for Governments and Corporations:

The financial markets hold an increasingly important role in government and corporate initiatives designed to fight climate change and make the transition to the low carbon economy.

Less is More – Energy Efficiency (End Use):

Improved energy efficiency is often the most economic and readily available means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, there exists a difference between the actual level of investment in energy efficiency and the higher level that would be economically beneficial from the consumer’s point of view.

The Local Market of the Nordic: Russia:

Recently the Russian economy has been developing at a very high pace and significant investments are being made in the energy and environmental sector, as well as in restructuring.

Adaptation – Urban Climate Solutions:

Even with substantial reductions in emissions today, the delay in the climate system means that emissions we have already released into the atmosphere will continue to affect the climate for years to come. The impact on cities and the people living there will be significant.

De-linking Economic Growth from Emissions – Bypassing the Western Route to Low Carbon Economy:

The interrelations between economic growth, energy and CO2 have a tremendous influence on the possibilities of a global ambitious treaty being drafted at the COP15.

EU – Framework Conditions:

This year a new EU energy market package has been submitted. The ambition is to create framework conditions for efficient and functioning sustainable energy markets. How can the EU balance energy policies between the aims of security of supply, competitiveness and sustainable energy?

Renewable Energy Production;

With a raising stream of billions of dollars into the sector, the investments in renewable energy production reach new records each year.The Nordic Region has great experience in renewable energy production from a wide spectrum of sources. How may this experience and knowledge be utilized in the global market and what are the barriers to expanding the renewable portfolio standard?
If you are an expert who could speak on any of these issues or know someone who is, we would greatly appreciate any recommendations you could pass on.

Please reply to  mwi at mm.dk

Thank you for any guidance/recommendations you can provide.

Meik Wiking
Project Manager
Nordic Climate Solutions

Monday Morning
Huset Mandag Morgen A/S
Valkendorfsgade 13
P.O. Box 1127
DK-1009 København K

T: +45 33 93 93 23
F: +45 33 14 13 94
E:  mwi at mm.dk
W: www.mm.dk

NORDIC CLIMATE SOLUTIONS – NOVEMBER 25TH AND 26TH – 2008.

WWW.NORDICCLIMATESOLUTIONS.COM

On the margins of an ALDE Group meeting in Tallinn yesterday, European Liberal Democrat Leader, Graham Watson, met Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip to discuss the future of the Lisbon Treaty in light of the Irish referendum and recent unhelpful remarks by European socialists (notably PASOK President George A. Papandreou and Austrian Chancellor Gusenbauer) demanding referendums on changes to the Treaty.

“Recent moves by Socialist leaders to make all EU treaty changes dependent on national referenda is at best irresponsible and at worst – an ill-conceived bow to populist pressure. Pawning the solution to the treaty stalemate is a bid to court eurosceptic voters which makes us all hostages to fortune” said Watson after the meeting. “The Irish rejected the Treaty, so it is right that their Government be invited to come back with an alternative solution to the dilemma we now face. Their task will not be assisted by such unilateral declarations.”

Watson went on to praise Estonia’s constructive role in Europe and the country’s Liberal economic model combining a flexible labour market and strict fiscal policies.

To be held at DSA Annual Conference 2008, DEVELOPMENT’S INVISIBLE HANDS,

Saturday, 8th November 2008, Church House, Westminster, London.

A maximum of four papers will be selected for presentation at the DSA
Annual Conference due to the panel’s time constraints. However, as there are
high levels of interest in this topic, we propose to select a larger number
of papers to present at the DSA Study Group on Climate Change and Development
meeting in September 2008. This will enable presenters to receive specialist
feedback from participants, and will provide material for a special journal
issue on climate change and development which will be linked to these two sessions.

The Study Group meeting will be held in London during the last two
weeks of September; date and location to be confirmed.

Dates:
Deadline for abstracts (750-1000 words) for the Panel and Study Group: 20th June 2008.
Selection for the panel and Study Group: 15th July 2008.
Deadline for full papers: 15th September 2008.

Panel convenors: Dr Emily Boyd, Dr Natasha Grist, Dr Sirkku Juhola and Valerie Nelson.

For any further information, please contact: Dr Sirkku Juhola, Senior
Researcher, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University
of Jyvaskyla, Finland.  sirkku.juhola at yfi.jyu.fi

Climate change is arguably the greatest threat of the 21st Century to
developing countries, a threat that will become an increasingly visible
and irrefutable determinant of development. The urgency of climate change
puts development in a completely new light. Land degradation, food insecurity,
extreme weather events, migration and social fragmentation are some of
the anticipated effects that will exacerbate millions of vulnerable
livelihoods globally. Funds for climate adaptation are slowly being pledged and
carbon offsets for development are marketed to individual consumers in the North.

Aid organizations are starting to consider new frameworks (e.g.
resilience) to better understand the intertwined nature of climate change,
development and the environment. However, will these efforts positively transform
existing linear forms of risk management, underlying knowledge-power
structures, and ultimately, poor people’s lives in a globalising, urbanising, context-specific reality?

The panel aims to analyse the theoretical and practical challenges facing
the future of development resulting from climate change. The papers
will reflect on concepts and application of resilience, sustainable development,
adaptation and mitigation at different scales of decision-making. They will
seek to answer the question: what are the patterns and futures of
development in the light of climate change, and how can these be influenced
to benefit the global poor most effectively?

We propose to focus on five current development and climate themes in
our considerations:
i) food security: the challenge of responding to both climate
change and development imperatives;
ii) disaster risk reduction: lessons for climate policy;
iii) carbon markets and considerations for development: ethics,
policy and practice;
iv) development futures: strategising and operationalising change;
v) climate knowledge and power.

Sirkku Juhola, PhD
Senior Reseacher (Social and Public Policy)
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy
University of Jyväskylä
PL 35 (MaB)
40014 University of Jyväskylä
Finland

Office hours Wed 9-11 (MaB217)
Email  sirkku.juhola at yfi.jyu.fi
Puh +358 (0)14 260 2828
Fax +358 (0)14 260 3101
 http://www.jyu.fi/en/

By Renata Goldirova from Brussels for the EUobserver – May 15, 2008.

One year after government websites in EU state Estonia were crippled by a series of cyber attacks, NATO has moved to set up a centre on cyber defence in the country’s capital, Tallinn.

Seven NATO members – Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Spain – signed a pact formally establishing a so-called Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.

“The need for a cyber defence centre to be opened today is compelling,” general James Mattis in charge of NATO’s transformation efforts, said after the ceremony, adding that the centre “will help the alliance defy and successfully counter the threats in this area.”

The centre – due to be up and running in August, but formally opened in 2009 – will conduct research and training on cyber warfare. It will have a staff of 30 people, half of them IT specialists from seven founding countries.

The United States will join the project as an observer, while other NATO allies are free to step in later.

The project is a direct response to three weeks of systematic cyber-attacks on Estonia’s government and private websites in April and May 2007 – something Tallinn claims was orchestrated by Moscow in response to a dispute involving a Soviet-era monument.

The Baltic state had moved a bronze statue of a soldier from central Tallinn to a military cemetery. The Bronze Soldier was erected by the then Soviet authorities in 1947 and is seen by many Russians as a testament to the Soviet Union’s painful contribution to the World War II effort.

But it is regarded by most Estonians as a symbol of 20th century Soviet oppression.

“We know how difficult it is to defend the sovereignty of our land and sea borders, and air space,” Estonian Defence Minister Jaak Aaviksoo was cited as saying by AP. “It is even more complicated in the borderless cyber space where there is no smoking gun, no fingerprints, no footprints.”

The 27-nation EU, for its part, has also moved to wage war against high-tech crime. The European Commission last May presented some ideas on how to cope with crimes such as online fraud, identity theft, hacking and child pornography.

A public consultation is still ongoing, but Brussels has made it clear it will act cautiously on the legislative front and rather focus on boosting cooperation between EU states.

www.SustainabiliTank.info posts the following Washington Post article as a memorial to what we were saying since the start of our website. Sure – the surge has started to work, but to what end? Will the US be able to hold Iraq together as one state common to all its communities? Is it really important to have it as one integrated oil exporting source, at a time that we will anyway start to decrease our economy’s dependence on oil? After removing Saddam we could have left the Iraqi’s to sort out their future by themselves. Had they come up with a Saddam-alike, the US could have gone in a third time – less cost and nothing lost. If the US still insists in keeping Iraq in one piece – will this not push the country even more into future collusion with Iran? The Shiia are the majority and the only part of Iraq that really seeks independence are the Kurds. Why hold them back from achieving their goal? Even Turkey starts to understand that a secure Kurdistan, cards played right, could be to their advantage, and the EU, without pressure from the US, would also shine some light in that direction. The Sunni monarchs of the League of Arab States are yet years away from understanding the emerging new neighborhood in which extreme religious interpretation is bound to highjack also their own states – this because they had that false hope that the oil-money can help them deflect the ire of their own people to targets abroad – the likes of Israel, and even their own benefactor – the United States. This sounds sick – but sick it is. It was that oil-money, that to different degrees, paved the way and paid for the radicalization of the world’s two billion Muslims.

And what did all of this do to the value of the dollar and to US economy at large?

Surely, The Washington Post does not make our points, but then it presents a reasonable description of how sad America feels on this day – after five years of war and just one year after the start of a real attempt to manage that war.

The EU Observer looks into the damages the continuation of the war did to EU-US relations and to the split it created within the EU. What is the value loss to the US from above? How long will take the healing process?
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

 http://euobserver.com/9/25856/?rk=1

Five Years In Iraq
Iraqis and Americans Offer Perspectives on the War
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 19, 2008; A01

The planning ministry in Baghdad explodes after being hit during the second day of U.S. raids on the Iraqi capital March 20, 2003. (Faleh Kheiber – Reuters)

For a majority of Americans, today marks the fifth anniversary of the start of an Iraq war that was not worth fighting, one that has cost thousands of lives and more than half a trillion dollars. For the Bush administration, however, it is the first anniversary of an Iraq strategy that it believes has finally started to succeed.

It has been about a year since Army Gen. David H. Petraeus arrived to command U.S. forces in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker took over as the chief U.S. diplomat, and the military deployed 30,000 more troops to protect and rebuild neighborhoods.

Officials now running the U.S. effort express frustration that the gains wrought by their new political, security and economic policies — in particular, sharply reduced violence — are continually weighed against the first four years of the war, when Iraq unraveled in insurgency and sectarian strife.

“I came to Washington to describe what we’re doing,” Charles P. Ries, Crocker’s senior deputy in charge of reconstruction and the Iraqi economy, said during a visit last week. “At almost every meeting, somebody wants me to describe what we used to do. . . . I know why people raise these questions, but I don’t feel it’s something I can speak to. The times were different then.”

Today’s policy is fundamentally different from the impatient mind-set of 2003, in both lowered U.S. expectations and a less imperious approach to dealing with Iraqi authorities. “In those days,” Ries said, “we decided what [the Iraqis] needed, and we built it.” Today, he said, Iraqis are asked what they want, and then told that while the United States will help, they will have to pay for most of it themselves.

Yet as the administration requests additional war funding and calls for a pause in promised troop withdrawals, some question its right to a second chance. “Like a tourniquet,” the troop increase “has stopped the bleeding,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former Army Ranger and senior member of the Armed Services Committee, reported last week after his 11th trip to Iraq. What he has not seen, Reed said, are the surgery and recovery that would begin to heal the wound that Iraq has become. And even U.S. officials acknowledge that the “surge” has not led to the political reconciliation the administration had hoped for.

Others see the past year’s successes as fragile and reversible, and less consequential than the pain that preceded them. “I think they have it righter than they ever have before,” Daniel P. Serwer, an Iraq expert with the U.S. Institute of Peace, said of the administration. “But the fact is that those four other years did exist, and they condition a lot of what can and cannot happen now. There’s a history here, there’s a lot of blood and guts on the floor — literally.”

The White House tends to dismiss such longer memories. While it recognizes the inclination to “relitigate the past” when a milestone such as the fifth anniversary is reached, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, “our focus is on the way ahead and making sure that the current situation and the future situation gets better.”

In addition to new directions on the ground in Iraq, officials point to a newly effective structure designed to avoid the kind of ad hoc decision-making that led to early bureaucratic gridlock and mistakes, such as decrees dissolving the Iraqi army and banning Baath Party members from government jobs. President Bush‘s appointment last spring of Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute as deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan has “helped streamline the process and made sure that there is . . . a senior-level official who can devote his full, undivided attention” to the subject, Johndroe said.

The once-bickering State Department and Pentagon are reporting new levels of cooperation. Diplomats who recall Donald H. Rumsfeld‘s insistence that the Defense Department control all aspects of early postwar policy note approvingly that it was his successor as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, who recently called on Congress to increase the State Department’s budget.

Many U.S. officials participating in the new efforts talk about those years as though they belonged to another administration. “We weren’t here five years ago,” said one who, like several interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity about past policy on the grounds that it would undermine the present.

“In the early days, they had an idea of something, a plan, of how it was going to be,” the official said. “They would remove Saddam, and democracy would flower. They took this plan and rammed it down into the reality of Iraq, which nobody understood. What did they know about Iraq? Who were they listening to?” In the past year, the official said, “there has been a coming to grips across the board with Iraqi reality.”

One of the more troublesome realities is that Iraqi leaders have been slow to take advantage of the “breathing space” that the troop increase was supposed to create. The administration has often noted that Washington and Baghdad operate on different clocks, with the U.S. timetable for demonstrable progress running far faster than its Iraqi counterpart. In an interview last week, Petraeus, the U.S. military commander, acknowledged that “no one” in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation” or in the provision of basic public services.

In congressional testimony scheduled for early next month, both Petraeus and Crocker are expected to make the case that enough forward movement has been made to justify continuing the current strategy, and to warn that an abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops could jeopardize the gains of the past year.

But while a strong congressional appearance by the two men last September quieted talk of funding cutoffs and brought a brief rise in public attention, their upcoming testimony appears to have sparked little anticipation.

As the administration struggles to focus on Iraq’s future, it is competing with a presidential race locked in debate about how the war began and how to end it, a Democratic Congress determined to fight over every additional dollar, and a weary, distracted public.

Indeed, once a top public concern, Iraq has been muscled aside by the economy and the political campaigns. In a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center, more people knew the names of the head of the Federal Reserve Board and the president of Venezuela than knew the approximate number of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

Some public views about the situation in Iraq have eased over the past year. But others, including baseline judgments about the war itself, have hardly budged. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly two-thirds said the war was not worth waging. Less than half, 43 percent, think the United States is making significant progress, and majorities continue to judge the war’s benefits as not worth its costs.

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.

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And From the EUobserver – Iraq and the EU: Five Years On.

20.03.2008 – 09:21 CET | By Renata Goldirova from Brussels.
It has been five years since the United States began its military operation dubbed ‘Iraqi Freedom’. The war resulted in a deep rift in transatlantic relations, caused a split within the European Union and made Iraqis the single largest group seeking refuge in Europe.

On 20 March 2003, thousands of troops from four countries – the US (250,000), the United Kingdom (45,000), Australia (2,000) and Poland (194) – invaded Iraq. The invasion led to a quick defeat of the Iraqi regime, with its leader, Saddam Hussein, being captured in December 2003 and executed in December 2006.

The US and its allies cited allegations that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed and was actively developing weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the invasion. However, no evidence of weapons of mass destruction have been found in the country’s territory.

“Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting … The answer is clear to me: removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision,” US president George W. Bush said on Wednesday (19 March).

Some estimates suggest that up to one million Iraqis have been killed since 2003, while the financial burden amounts to some $9 billion for London and $845 billion for Washington. Former head of the IMF Joseph Stiglitz has recently estimated the cost to be as high as $3 trillion.

But Mr Bush referred to the costs of the war as “exaggerated estimates”. “No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure – but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq,” he said.

EU split:

The issue of military intervention against Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime became the biggest ever test for the EU’s common foreign and security policy, as member states were not able to speak with one voice.

Several countries, led by France and Germany, were opposed to US-led invasion, while others took part.

At the time, US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld exacerbated the divisions by saying: “Germany has been a problem and France has been a problem.”

“You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe,” Mr Rumsfeld famously said.

Since 2003, a number of EU countries such as Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia and the Netherlands have withdrawn their soldiers from the violence-torn country, mainly due to public opinion.

At the same time, troops from Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Romania and the Czech Republic remain deployed in Iraq.

Pressure from Iraqi refugees:

According to fresh numbers released by the UN high commissioner for refugees earlier this week (18 March), asylum requests from Iraqis climbed to 38,286 in 2007, a sharp increase from the 19,375 claims in 2006.

A number of non-governmental organisations have therefore blamed the EU for not doing enough over a major refugee crisis, pointing to the fact that the treatment of Iraqis varies significantly from one member state to another.

For example, Sweden’s reception facilities have been under huge pressure, as the Scandinavian country is the only one within the 27-nation bloc granting refugee status or other protection to almost all Iraqi asylum seekers. A total of 9,065 Iraqis applied for refugee status there in 2006, compared to 2,330 the previous year.

The EU “cannot continue to ignore one of the world’s major displacement crises,” says a statement of a group of eight NGOs, including Amnesty International and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles.

In general, it is estimated that six million people inside Iraq need urgent humanitarian assistance as a result of the conflict. Some 2.5 million are internally displaced, while an additional two million are hosted by neighbouring countries such as Syria and Jordan.

25.02.2008 – 17:40 CET | By Elitsa Vucheva, for the EUobserver, February 25, 2008.

A number of environmentally controversial projects such as the construction of waste incinerators and motorways that traverse valuable natural areas in Central and Eastern Europe are receiving financing by the EU or have applied to do so, two NGOs have said, who are calling on the EU to stop “wasting” money and look into alternative possibilities.

NGOs Friends of the Earth Europe and CEE Bankwatch Network – an organisation monitoring financial institutions in central and eastern Europe – on Monday (25 February) presented a map detailing 50 projects that they say are “environmentally damaging, economically ineffective, present legal deficiencies and face opposition from the local populations”.

The projects are in member states Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as EU candidates Croatia and Macedonia and have a total cost of €22 billion.

While some have already been approved, the pressure groups are hoping to change the course of the projects still in the pipeline for the 2007-2013 period – the years covering the bloc’s current multi-annual budget.

“We don’t want to block the projects, but to prevent the problems before they have happened,” said Martin Konecny, coordinator for EU funds at Friends of the Earth Europe.

Mr Konecny underlined that the issue was not the EU funding for the countries as such – which is “necessary and welcome”, but the “significant amount of money spent on controversial projects”.

The NGOs say projects include those aimed at promoting the use of waste incinerators rather than recycling; the construction of motorways whose routes may damage “valuable natural areas or residential zones regardless of possible alternative routes” and water management projects that will harm rivers and other natural sites.

They plan to write letters to various EU commissioners, as well as to member states’ national representations in Brussels, to highlight the controversial projects and ask them to consider alternatives.

The most harmful projects outlined by the NGOs include a scheme for building nine waste incinerators in Poland, as well as two expressways – one in Poland and one in the Czech Republic.

For its part, the European Commission declined to comment on the substance of the projects and the criticism expressed by the NGOs.

“But we welcome their interest in what is happening. We want an open discussion, so that EU money can be spent in the best possible way. It is our duty to listen,” she added.

This posting is intended as an in depth advice to the leaders of the UN, the UNFCCC, the EU, Poland and Denmark.

Look – it was the appearance of a new Prime-Minister from Australia, Mr. Kevin Rudd, that created the momentum that saved the Bali event from its well advertised destiny – a clear failure. It was not a failure because of the open stand taken by a new Australia. The timing of the Australian elections was fortunate – the result was not sure, but it was clear that one way or the other, it would bring better clarity to where the multi-Nation deliberations were going.

The COP 14 of the UNFCCC is planned for December 2008 – that is after the US Presidential elections, and one way or the other – the US delegation will have less authority then a lame-duck delegation. Why have a predictable fiasco in the making while a much more solid meeting could be envisioned with the real boss of America at the table? Oh! yes – we wrote about a US II delegation headed by a President-in-Waiting delegation. There was precedent – but it is not as efficient as having the real leadership of the US present. We know that for several years the US is not represented at these meetings by a delegation representing the majority of its population, but then the majority of the UN Membership is neither.

But this time it is different. The real boss will be a Democrat that will effectuate a clean brake from the present Administration, or a Republican who will seriously deviate from the present broken leadership of his country.

In either case the US will stop being a by-stander having to be asked to step aside and stop blocking the “roadway.”

The US is destined to become a leader – as we said so many times – because of US business being interested in reconnecting with the world at large. These folks, in addition to those who look at climate change as an environmental issue – will after January 20, 2008 take over the White House and as said aim at putting the US back in the leaders chair where the country belongs indeed. Everybody can see this by now.

So, it is up to the EU to talk this over with Poland and Denmark and then go to the UN and ask for the UNFCCC to change the COP 14 (Poznan) date – then perhaps the COP 15 date (Copenhagen), if this be needed, could also be moved to the beginning of 2010 rather then the end of 2009, or at least to the mid-December 2009 time spot in order to preserve the magic of the 2009 figure.

Also, as there is no leadership at present at the UN Commission On Sustainable Development, the UN CSD, it really should be the EU to step forward, in spite of the unpleasant Zimbabwe Chairmanship of that body, tell the UN that it sees the importance of reviving this presently moribund UN limb – so it is ready to participate at the 2009 UNFCCC Copenhagen table as a locus where much of the execution of adaptation and mitigation in the middle- and lower-developing countries will be picked up. By that time, with Zimbabwe gone, even the more reticent EU members will be able to return and see what programs they can have with Africa, for instance. A new Secretary of the CSD, a person that has the background to bridge between the sides – viscerally-good and protestation-bad – has to be in place already by 2008, in order to pull this off.

July 16, 2007 – President’s Day in Botswana.

Today is the eve of President’s Day celebrations in Botswana. Like “Botswana Day”, which every year falls on the anniversary of our nation’s independence, President’s Day is an annual occasion for Batswana to reflect on the fruits of their political sovereignty. The creation of the State Presidency at the time of independence brought to an end a period of eighty-one year’s in which the British Crown had claimed and exercised sovereign rights over Botswana’s territory, much of which was thus demarcated as “Crownlands”.

During the colonial period, imperial sovereignty over Botswana was annually celebrated by the British administration as either “King’s” or “Queen’s” day, an Empire wide tradition that dated back to the time of Queen Victoria (“Mmamosadinyana”). Replacing Queen’s Day with President’s Day thus represented a break from foreign rule to self-rule.

Subsequently, it was also deemed appropriate to mark the 1st of July birth date of Botswana’s first President, Sir Seretse Khama with a separate holiday, while preserving the tradition of President’s Day.

It has also become an informal tradition for local political parties to hold meetings on the President’s Day long weekend. Thus, while H.E. the President has been attending the 32nd National Congress of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), elsewhere around the country there have been similar gatherings of various other political movements that, like stars in a constellation, collectively enlighten this nation’s democratic unity in diversity.

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From the President’s Statement:

CITIZEN EMPOWERMENT

14. Our government has championed citizen empowerment for the past 41 years, and we will continue enthusiastically to do so. A plethora of empowerment schemes exist and have existed as individual projects or as sectoral programmes in our development plans. Since they have not been isolated and highlighted in one document, some people, including members of the BDP have erroneously assumed that we do not have a policy on citizen empowerment.

15. The bottom line is that an enabling environment should exist, wherein all Batswana are empowered with requisite opportunities and skills to enable them to optimise their standard of living. Furthermore, it should be clarified, that most proponents of a stand alone citizen economic empowerment policy often refer to countries that have a preferential treatment policy for a specific segment of their society.

16. In most cases the segment that is being singled out for targeted empowerment tends to be a historically disadvantaged group, but in Botswana our empowerment efforts should and must focus on every single Motswana and not a specified segment of the population as we have all been previously disadvantaged.

POVERTY

17. The BDP Governments have over the years focused aggressively in resourcing the poor in our society. Not only has poverty dropped from 60% in our population in 1985/86 to 28% in 2002/03; a clear indication of our success in our poverty eradication efforts, but we have also very effective safety nets which ensure, that not one Motswana can perish because of hunger.

18. Our safety nets include schemes for the poor, the aged, remote area dwellers, orphans, the disabled and war veterans. As I speak, my government has allocated some P395m to drought relief projects for this year alone. This will provide part time employment for some 180, 000 Batswana the majority of whom would have depended on agriculture had the rains been good.

EMPOWERMENT IN EDUCATION AND LOCAL TRAINING PROGRAMMES

19. Education has been either heavily subsidized or totally free for all Batswana from primary to secondary education. All deserving Batswana continue to get substantial assistance for their education even at tertiary level. These subsidies on education are a targeted investment by the BDP government, intended to provide Batswana, with a springboard they could use to empower themselves.

20. The expansion of the University of Botswana; the planned Botswana International University of Science and Technology; and the Medical School and Training Hospital are recent examples of projects in education aimed at further empowering Batswana for employment and higher calibre job creation. Recently the Ministry of Education started to sponsor students at local private tertiary institutions for Diploma and Degree courses. Over 7000 are now so sponsored. This is empowerment.

SUBSIDISED HEALTHCARE

21. Health care is virtually free in Botswana. Even expensive medications such as ARV’s are availed free of charge. The BDP government is cognisant of the relationship between an individual’s health and their overall ability to command an acceptable living standard.

22. For this reason, we have ensured, on a sustained basis, that our people have the best healthcare we are capable of providing as a nation. The evidence is overwhelming! Our commitment and determination to arrest the spread of HIV/AIDS is total and unshakable – hence the modest success we have registered in reducing the rate of infection.

UNEMPLOYMENT

40. Our ultimate objective is to achieve full employment for all our citizens as reflected in our Vision 2016 statement. As Democrats are aware, the rate of unemployment was around 10% in the early 1990′s. However, as a result of a combination of chronic droughts and the plateauing of minerals growth with a concomitant depression in the construction industry unemployment rose to 24% and it hovered around that level for many years, until recently, when we were able to reduce it to 17.6%.

41. The big projects which your government has initiated should force unemployment to go down further. I must express my concern though, about the rather lax attitude of some of our people. Many jobs in the agricultural sector remain unmanned for a long time because Batswana are not interested in working in that sector. This is regrettable. If we are to fight unemployment successfully we must become less choosy.

ELECTIONS

51. This is the penultimate congress before the next General Elections in 2009. This means by the time we get to the 2009 Congress it will be too late to fine tune or sharpen our thinking in various policy areas. This congress is, therefore, the most important opportunity to do so.

52. Our election preparedness starts right now with the preparations for “Bulela Ditswe” our primary elections. The Central Committee has appointed a Task Force, which in turn has sent teams around the country to clean up our membership registration hitches. This is very important, as it will determine that we have a clean, peaceful primary election, not adulterated by incomplete voters’ rolls and allegations of rigging.

53. Of course ultimately the business of any political party that wants to run the country is to win elections. It is for this reason that everything that we do must be aimed towards – the attainment of that objective – the 2009 elections. I shall never tire of reminding you, to channel all your energies towards making sure, that the BDP not only wins those elections but does so convincingly.

54. A scenario where we win the majority of seats but fail to command a comfortable majority in the popular vote is not a good one. Let us face it, it would undermine our mandate. Although in other countries it is not uncommon for a party to win elections sometimes with numbers as low as 30%, our opponents seem to think our 52% gives them some hope and even reason to celebrate.

55. I know we can legally and legitimately exercise a mandate even with less than half of the popular vote, but this we should never aim at. If all Batswana who were carrying our cards in 2004 had voted for their party, we would have won with more than 60% of the popular vote.

OPPOSITION

56. As for the opposition, we should remember, that they still present no alternative to ourselves, united or separately. This is why Batswana look to us as their only hope. Our policies, programmes and projects are well thought out. I still do not know what our opposition stands for. This situation is further compounded by the very public disunity that currently plagues the main opposition party, the BNF.

57. Anyone who thinks their recent special congress has healed their rift has got another surprise coming. To begin with, the one group did not even accept the results and we are receiving reports of a divided and disenchanted opposition membership around the country.

58. We should not, however, just sit here and celebrate their current state of disarray. We must work hard to exploit it to our benefit. We should graphically point out their current state of affairs.
Imagine the leader of a political party contemplating to run in an election under another party name and symbol as we hear is being contemplated in Ramotswa! And as happened in Lobatse when the leader of PUSO, in the person of Modubule successfully usurped the BNF seat and came to Parliament. You could go through them one after another and still be left wondering. The answer is of course that there is still no alternative.

59. This is why it is laughable for an organization like the BCP, which is not even running for state power, to lampoon Botswana’s democracy. Our democratic credentials are impeccable. They constitute the foundation of our political culture. And as such they do not belong to a single party but to all Batswana.

60. An entity that dissociates itself from this democratic culture runs the risk, of being driven into the political wilderness by our voters. I would not be surprised if the lonely member the BCP has in Parliament, who is there by dint of our generosity, went into extinction after 2009.

61. Madomi a Mantle, as I mentioned at the recent Women’s Wing Congress, the Constitution of our country, quite properly decrees that I retire by the 31st March 2008. I thank you most sincerely for the support that you have always given me during my tenure as Party leader. I have no doubt that you will extend similar support to my successor, His Honour the Vice President, Lt General Seretse Khama Ian Khama. I should enjoy my retirement immensely if you would do so.

CONCLUSION

62. In conclusion, let me wish you well in your Congress and encourage you to be level headed in your discussions if you are to come up with meaningful resolutions. May I also ask that we end our Congress in the spirit of love and mutual respect that must reflect our current theme: Unity and hard Work: Towards 2009 and beyond. Those elected and their supporters must, as they celebrate their success, do so with the utmost restraint and have consideration for the feelings of those who will have been less fortunate.

63. Much as I will spend as much time with you as I can, the immediate affairs of the country require that I, as is usual, leave you at some point to join the people of Goodhope on President’s Day. I join Batswana in different parts of the country every year for these celebrations at this time.

64. It is now my singular honour and privilege to declare this the 32nd National Congress of the Botswana Democratic Party officially open. TSHOLETSA! TSHOLETSA!

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10/7/07 – from the World Bank Institute launches 2007 World Governance Indicators (WGI) Report:

With reference to the above, please find below [a] Statement by this Office, as well as [b] the full text of a media release received earlier this evening from the World Bank. The World Bank media release had been embargoed for forward transmission until 19hOO local time (CAT) (13h00 EST – Washington D.C.). Both statements’ can thus be understood as breaking news.

[a] “Botswana praised in latest World Governance Indicators Report

This Office is pleased to note that Botswana was once more been singled out for special praise by World Bank researchers in the context of today’s launch of the 2007 World Governance Indicators (WGI) Report, the full title of which is: “Governance Matters, 2007: Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996-2006″.

The launch was held at the World Bank Institute in Washington D.C.

In a statement released by the World Bank to coincide with the launch, Botswana has been singled out by researchers as being among a select group of developing countries that score higher on key dimensions of governance than a number of leading industrialized countries.

Botswana is the only African country to be so singled out in the statement. The other high achievers among those classified as “developing countries”, which are listed along with Botswana in the statement are Slovenia, Chile, Estonia, Uruguay, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, and Costa Rica.

The 2007 World Governance Indicators Report is said to represent a decade-long effort by a global network of researchers to build and update the most comprehensive cross-country set of governance indicators currently available to the public.

The latest indicators are further reported to cover a total of 212 countries and territories, drawing on 33 different data sources to capture the views of tens of thousands of survey respondents worldwide, as well as thousands of experts in the private, NGO, and public sectors.

This Office is also pleased to note that Botswana has performed well in all six of the Report’s identified components of good governance, which are:

1. Voice and Accountability – measuring the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media.

2. Political Stability and Absence of Violence – measuring perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including terrorism

3. Government Effectiveness – measuring the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies

4. Regulatory Quality – measuring the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development

5. Rule of Law – measuring the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence

6. Control of Corruption – measuring the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as “capture” of the state by elites and private interests.

The aggregate indicators as well as data from the underlying sources will be available at the website www.govindicators.org, which currently posts last’s year’s aggregate data.

According to the World Bank statement measuring various countries’ governance performance, and their improvements over time, is both a key item on the international governance agenda and a complex challenge, as governance has many dimensions, each with inherent measurement challenges. It goes on to state that the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project shows how this challenge can be met.

[b] [World Bank Institute] Press Release No: 2007/009/WBI… [The Release is now accessible online at - www.worldbank.org]

E2) 11/7/06: “Botswana a global leader in Political Stability”

The World Bank Institute report “Governance Matters, 2007: Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996-2006″, which was released yesterday, has ranked Botswana among the global leaders for Political Stability and the Absence of Violence.

With a score of 92.8% Botswana was ranked number 16 in the category out of the 212 countries and territories covered by the study, as well as number one in Africa. The score also placed Botswana above:

* all of the G8 nations, i.e. Canada (80.3), France (61.5), Germany (75.0), Italy (56.3), Japan (85.1), Russia (23.6), UK (61.1), and USA (57.7);

* all but 2 of the member states of the European Union, i.e. Finland (99.0), Luxemburg (99.5);

* all but 2 countries/territories in the Western Hemisphere, i.e. Aruba (95.7), St. Kitts & Nevis (94.2);

* all but 3 countries/territories in Asia, i.e. Bhutan (95.2), Brunei (93.3), and Singapore (94.7).

The 2007 World Governance Indicators Report is said to reflect a decade-long effort by a global network of researchers to build and update the most comprehensive cross-country set of governance indicators currently available to the public. Its composite indicators for 212 countries and territories have been drawn from 33 different data sources to capture the views of tens of thousands of survey respondents worldwide, as well as thousands of experts in the private, NGO, and public sectors.

Botswana scored exceptionally well for all six areas identified by the Report as being the key components of good governance. As labelled in the report itself, these are:

1) “Voice and Accountability” – measuring political, civil and human rights;

2) “Political Stability and Absence of Violence” – measuring the likelihood of violent threats to, or changes in, government, including terrorism;

3) “Government Effectiveness” – measuring the competence of the bureaucracy and the quality of public service delivery;

4) “Regulatory Quality” – measuring the incidence of market-unfriendly policies;

5) “Rule of Law” – measuring the quality of contract enforcement, the police, and the courts, including judiciary independence, and the incidence of crime; and

6) “Control of Corruption” – measuring the abuse of public power for private gain, including petty and grand corruption and state capture by elites.

With a composite score for all of the above categories of 74 Botswana occupies first position in Africa, followed by Mauritius (72) Cape Verde (66), South Africa (65), Namibia (62) and Seychelles (55).
13/7/07: 2007 Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) Africa Top Ten wrap up: “Botswana leads the way, as African countries make progress”

According to a now widely circulated news article, originally published in the New York Times, Africa has been portrayed “as a continent of great variety, with some countries making extraordinary progress over the past decade” in the latest World Bank Institute study “Governance Matters, 2007: Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996-2006″, which was released earlier this week in Washington D.C.

The article further cites the World Bank’s own descriptions of the study as providing strong evidence to contradict the notion of “Afro-pessimism”, while, moreover, establishing that wealthy, industrialized nations must also struggle with challenges of corruption and bad governance. In this respect the study is seen as a credible counter to negative media stereotypes of Africa as a whole as somehow being a continent that is uniquely mired in corruption, misrule and violence.

When combined, the World Bank Institute Report’s indicators place Botswana among the global leaders, as well as number one in Africa, for good governance. At the Report’s launch Botswana was thus singled out as being among an emerging group of developing countries that had scored higher on key dimensions of governance than many leading industrialized countries.

Described as the world’s most comprehensive database on governance issues, the Report incorporates composite indicators for a total of 212 countries and territories, which have been drawn from 33 different data sources. These are said to capture the views of tens of thousands of survey respondents worldwide, as well as thousands of experts in the private, NGO, and public sectors.

Botswana’s composite WGI score was 74, while Africa’s other top ten overall performers were, as ranked, were: Mauritius (72), Cape Verde (66), South Africa (65), Namibia (62), Ghana (55), Seychelles (55), Tunisia (53), Madagascar (48) and Lesotho (48).

In achieving its top score Botswana was also ranked well above the international norm, as well as in first, second or third position for Africa in each of the sub-category indexes for the six areas that were identified by the Report as being key components of good governance.

Botswana score and rank among Africa’s top ten for each of the six is reproduced below:

I. “Political Stability and Absence of Violence Index”, which is a composite of indicators measuring the likelihood of violent threats to, or changes in, government, including terrorism:

Botswana (93), Seychelles (84), Mauritius (79), Cape Verde (79), Namibia (75), Mozambique (64), Benin (59), Zambia (57), Libya (55), and Ghana (55). (In this index Botswana was also ranked 16 out of the 212 countries and territories surveyed.)

II. “Voice and Accountability Index”, which is a composite of indicators measuring political, civil and human rights:

Mauritius (75), Cape Verde (74), Botswana (67), South Africa (67), Benin (66), Namibia (61), Ghana (60), Mali (58), Lesotho (56), Seychelles (54).

III “Government Effectiveness Index”, which is a composite indicators measuring the competence of the bureaucracy and the quality of public service delivery:

South Africa (77), Botswana (74), Mauritius (72), Tunisia (71), Cape Verde (62), Namibia (59), Ghana (57), Morocco (56), Seychelles (53), Madagascar (50).

IV. “Regulatory Quality Index”, which is a composite of indicators measuring the incidence of market-unfriendly policies;

South Africa (70), Mauritius (67), Botswana (63), Tunisia (58), Namibia (57), Ghana (51), Morocco (48), Cape Verde (45), Madagascar (43), Senegal (42).

V. “Rule of Law Index”, which is a composite of indicators measuring the quality of contract enforcement, the police, and the courts, including judiciary independence, and the incidence of crime:

Mauritius (76), Botswana (67), Cape Verde (66), Tunisia (60), Namibia (57), South Africa (57), Seychelles (55), Morocco (53), Ghana (51), Lesotho (49).

VI. “Control of Corruption Index”, which is a composite of indicators measuring the abuse of public power for private gain, including petty and grand corruption and state capture by elites:

Botswana (78), Cape Verde (72), South Africa (71), Mauritius (66), Tunisia (62), Namibia (61), Seychelles (61), Lesotho (58), Morocco (57), Rwanda (56).

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11/7/07: Report from VOA News  www.voanews.com) – “Six African Countries Win High Marks in New Study of Religious Freedoms”

Six African countries – Botswana, Mali, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, and Kenya – rank among the world’s most tolerant societies in terms of religious freedoms. That’s according to the latest study by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. It measured the amount of government regulation, government favouritism toward a particular religion, and the amount of social pressures and constraints imposed by other faiths and organized groups in the country.

These factors, along with a high economic correlation had a close bearing on the study’s rankings of more than 100 countries worldwide. Eritrea and Sudan ranked among the most restrictive. Paul Marshall is the Hudson Institute Centre’s Senior Fellow and editor of its latest study, Religious Freedom in the World 2007. In Washington, he said that the 20 African countries studied revealed several success stories and also displayed some surprising anomalies.

“Sub-Saharan Africa scores lower than western Europe and the North Atlantic countries, all of which tend to score pretty highly with ones, twos, or threes. It scores better than North Africa and West Asia (sometimes called the greater Middle East),” he says……”The study shows that religious freedom correlates very well with firstly economic freedom, and the development of markets. Secondly, it correlates with economic well-being, that income levels measure equality. It actually correlates even better than income with indexing, as measured in this context, by numbers of cell phones in use. And we have grounds to believe that we can actually show, in general, religious freedom helps development. This is true in Sub-Saharan Africa especially,” he says.

The European Commission wants to hold back the rise in global temperatures to 2C above the pre-industrial level (at present, the level is 0.6C). To do that, it wants member states to commit to cutting back emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, as long as other developed countries agree to do the same.

Failing that, the EU would observe a unilateral target of a 20 per cent cut.

The Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, gave US President George Bush a preview of the new policy during a visit to the White House this week.

The force of today’s report lies in its setting out of the scale of the continent-wide threat to Europe’s “ecosystem services”. That is a relatively new but powerful concept, which recognises essential elements of civilised life – such as food, water, wood and fuel – which may generally be taken for granted, are all ultimately dependent on the proper functioning of ecosystems in the natural world. Historians have recognised that Europe was particularly lucky in this respect from the start, compared to Africa or pre-Columbian America – and this was a major reason for Europe’s rise to global pre-eminence.

“Climate change will alter the supply of European ecosystem services over the next century,” the report says. “While it will result in enhancement of some ecosystem services, a large portion will be adversely impacted because of drought, reduced soil fertility, fire, and other climate change-driven factors.

“Europe can expect a decline in arable land, a decline in Mediterranean forest areas, a decline in the terrestrial carbon sink and soil fertility, and an increase in the number of basins with water scarcity. It will increase the loss of biodiversity.”

The report predicts there will be some European “winners” from climate change, at least initially. In the north of the continent, agricultural yields will increase with a lengthened growing season and a longer frost-free period. Tourism may become more popular on the beaches of the North Sea and the Baltic as the Mediterranean becomes too hot, and deaths and diseases related to winter cold will fall. But the negative effects will far outweigh the advantages. Take tourism. The report says “the zone with excellent weather conditions, currently located around the Mediterranean (in particular for beach tourism) will shift towards the north”. And it spells out the consequences:

“The annual migration of northern Europeans to the countries of the Mediterranean in search of the traditional summer ‘sun, sand and sea’ holiday is the single largest flow of tourists across the globe, accounting for one-sixth of all tourist trips in 2000. This large group of tourists, totalling about 100 million per annum, spends an estimated €100bn ( £67bn) per year. Any climate-induced change in these flows of tourists and money would have very large implications for the destinations involved.”